Haken Anime! The 2010s Anime Dream That Could Have Been [Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei World, Vol. 10

As the era is changing from the Heisei era to the 2025 era, the series "Re-Animate for the Post-Heisei World" aims to capture the contemporary landscape through time reviews of notable anime.

The theme this time is the live-action movie "Haken Anime! . It is a film about the animation industry in which various people in the industry exchange their passionate feelings centered on the conflict between Hitomi Saito (Riho Yoshioka), a rookie animation director aiming for supremacy, and Chiharu Oji (Rinya Nakamura), a legendary genius animation director.


Critic Nakagawa Daichi takes a stab at this film about the anime industry, which is rare for a major motion picture featuring seasonal actors!

The movie "Haken Anime! The Meaning of the Reality of Anime Production in "Haken Anime!

Since my last review of "Shin Evangelion", I have failed to cover many topical works in the second half of 2021, such as "Mobile Suit Gundam: Senko no Hathaway", "The Dragon and the Freckled Princess", and "Ai no Utau wo Kiko wo Hear Me", but this time, I will focus on the topical special effects and anime works in the first half of this year, such as "Shin Ultraman" and "Dog and "Mobile Suit Gundam: Cruz Doan's Island", which are the hottest special effects and animation films in the first half of this year, and although the film has been doing well thanks to enthusiastic recommendations on SNS by people who have seen it, it cannot be said that it has been blessed with a lot of buzz. I would like to talk about the live-action film "Haken Anime!

This Japanese film is based on a novel of the same title by Fukazuki Tsujimura, which was serialized in a magazine from 2012 to 2014. Like the anime work "SHIROBAKO" (2014), this film depicts the backstage stories of TV anime producers as a "work" story. On the one hand, we have "Soundback: The Sound of Stone (Sabaku)," the directorial debut of Hitomi Saito (played by Riho Yoshioka), the protagonist of the film, who made her directorial debut after seven years in the industry after working at a prefectural government office and changing jobs at the major studio "Tokay Animation," and on the other hand, the legendary and charismatic The main feature of the film is that the production teams for each of these animated features were organized separately and the work was done by the production staff of the respective production companies.

On the other hand, unlike "SHIROBAKO," in which the protagonists are at the mercy of the director's wishes and schedule when they enter the animation industry as rookies in the production process, this work is a "work" in the animation industry, and the conflict between the director and producer, who are in charge of steering the production by using the on-site staff, is mainly seen in the upstream production process and in the public relations and advertising scenes. The drama is centered on the conflict between the director and producer, who are the ones who use the onsite staff and steer the production, mainly in the upstream process of production and public relations and advertising. As with many live-action occupational dramas, this film has a certain degree of reality that gives the viewer a sense of the "character" of the industry, interwoven with dramatic fictionality that is far removed from reality, but the fantasy surrounding the animation industry is actually a way to see the potential of Japanese animation, which has taken a different path from the reality of 2025. I also feel that we can find the potential of Japanese animation in the fantasy surrounding the animation industry, which has actually taken a different path from Reiwa's reality.

It is out of this interest that the "Haken Anime! I would like to consider the path of development of anime after the Heisei era, which could have been, as inscribed in the "Haken Anime!

First of all, to start with the fantastic aspects of this work, which are far removed from the actual situation of anime, it is worth mentioning that the "Haken" in the title of this work competes not in the late-night slot, the current main battleground of TV animation, where "over 50 new works" are said to be competing against each other, but in the "traditional slot" of key stations, the Saturday evening 5:00 p.m. slot, which is considered to be the most popular time for anime. The two stations are risking their corporate fortunes to produce the new series. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine a situation in which two TV stations are risking their corporate fortunes to compete for viewer ratings with rivalry in the same time slot, at least in the environment surrounding domestically produced TV animation since the beginning of this century. In short, the worldview is built on the same level of reality as that of manga, which is a ridiculous genre confrontation depicting traditional sports such as cooking, Go and Shogi, and non-major sports other than baseball and soccer as a major event that would attract national attention.

In the original novel, "Sabaku" is the only episode that airs on Saturdays at 5:00 p.m., while "Liddell" is broadcast in the late-night slot, which is a bit closer to reality. Therefore, the confrontation between the two sides in the Saturday 5 slot is just a modification to make the dramaturgy easier to understand for the movie adaptation, but as a result, the expectation for the TV anime that existed in the early 2010s when the original novel was first serialized is more pure and frozen in time. It is not hard to see that the expectations for the TV anime that existed in the early 2010s at the time of the original novel serialization have been frozen and preserved.

The context of "Magical Girl" history entrusted to the "Liddelight" anime play

This can be seen mainly by tracing the planning of the two animated films.

First, let us look at the predecessors, Oji Chiharu and "Liddel. As his name is mentioned in the acknowledgments of the original novel, Kunihiko Ikuhara is clearly the base model for Oji, who is portrayed as a handsome and charismatic director with a peppy authorial style. The debut work that made Prince's name famous was "Yosuga of Light," a magical girl anime with key visuals in the style of "Sailor Moon" (1992), which attracted even adults with its severe human drama and aesthetic artistry that broke the conventional schedule of anime for girls It is spoken of as a legendary work. The only other real-life work that corresponds to this position is "Shoujo Kakumei Utena" (1997), a work in which Ikuhara, who made his name by directing "Sailor Moon," had a major impact.

The impact of "Yosuga" deeply affected not only the main character, Hitomi, but also the heart of Kayako Arishina (played by Machiko Ono), who had already built a career as a production assistant in the animation industry. She planned "Liddel" as the return of Oji, who had not had a chance to direct a film since "Yosuga" for various reasons. When Oji directed "Yosuga" at Toei Animation (of course, Toei Animation was the model), she had planned to make a serious storyline in which the main characters died after the final battle in the last episode, but the production environment at that time, which placed importance on moderate merchandizing, did not allow it, and she was disappointed that she could not carry out the story she originally wanted to tell. However, the production environment of the time, which placed a premium on moderate merchandising, did not allow for this. The key to the drama of the "Liddell" side is the struggle of Kayako, who knows this, to protect his creativity as a producer while being caught between the TV station and the production site in order to make the prince fulfill his true intention of killing the magical girls once and for all.

The only model for a real-life magical girl anime that artistically pursues such a dark development is "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" (2011). In fact, the look of the animation in "Liddel," directed, storyboarded, and directed by Takashi Otsuka, who worked on the "Pretty Cure" series at Toei, with original character design by Takahiro Kishida, who participated in "MadoMagi" as a character designer and supervisory assistance, is clearly oriented toward the Shaft-style graphical The artwork is clearly oriented toward the Shaft-style graphical style that produced "MadoMagi.

In addition, the ritualistic battle setting in which the magical girls in the film compete in an annual race on a motorcycle called "Liddelite," recalls a sequence from the last scene of the theatrical version of "Revolutionary Girl Utena: Adolescence Revelation" (1999), in which Utena and her friends transform into motorcycles.

In this way, "Liddel" is entrusted with the concept of condensing the developmental history of "magical girl stories," a peculiar gender expression in Japanese anime, by superimposing the image of Kunihiko Ikuhara and "Mado Magi.